


incandescent

by bookworm1805



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Episode Related, Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice, Fallen Castiel, M/M, soul fic, this is essentially an ode to how much i love dean winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:05:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookworm1805/pseuds/bookworm1805
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Your soul,” Cas says one day. His voice breaks. “I can’t see your soul.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	incandescent

“I can’t see you anymore,” Cas says one day.

Dean looks at him askance and flips the burger patties on the grill. “Come again?” he asks.

Cas sits on the barstool at the counter, hands folded on the polished granite and eyes downcast. It’s been two weeks since the “greatest meteor shower of the century” shook the planet – that’s what all the news broadcasts are calling it, and the world’s top meteorologists are in a tizzy trying to explain it – and one week since Dean got a call from an unknown number, heard raspy uneven breathing on the other end and knew, inexplicably, that it was Cas. One week since Dean drove out to Pontiac Illinois – and why the fuck does Cas keep popping back in Pontiac?– and picked up his fallen angel, dirt caked on his overcoat and embedded in the tear tracks on his cheeks, and bundled him in the front seat with the blankets he’d shoved in the trunk.

One week since Sam and Dean undertook the impossible task of teaching Castiel how to  _live_ , instead of exist.

“Your soul,” comes the answer almost a full minute later. Cas’ voice breaks. “I can’t see your soul.”

Dean looks up abruptly, then stares hard at the bubbling fat on the grill and prods the meat to see if it’s done. He turns off the heat and forks them onto the buns he’s set out. One for Cas with ketchup, pickles, lettuce and tomato, just how he likes it, and one for Dean with all the fixings. He slides the plate over to his friend and sits down next to him.

He knows Cas will talk when he’s ready, and Dean will be here to listen. It’s how he’s taken on the past week of tears and frustration, and the occasional fit of Castiel throwing things into walls.

“When I was,” Cas begins roughly. He stops, clears his throat, and starts again. “When I was an angel. I could see…everything. I watched the trail a honeybee leaves in the air as he circles a flower. I saw the life-force of a blade of grass, and the rainbow in every drop of water.  I felt the earth vibrate as it turned beneath my feet. I would stand on one side of the planet and feel the warmth of the sunrise on the other, and I looked at a person and saw their heart, their mind, shining through every molecule. I could see their  _soul,_  Dean.” He pauses to stare at the grit caked under his fingernails – Cas has spent the past week compulsively washing his hands, unused to the feeling of dirt and grime they pick up on a day to day basis and  _hating_  it – and Deans breath turns quick and shallow.

 _“_ Not every soul is beautiful, of course,” Castiel continues in that same fractured voice. “Those of the truly depraved are black, warped, terrible things. Some are broken and shadowed, souls who have seen grief and been torn apart by it. Most are neutral; faintly glowing and pulsing brighter or darker in equal measure.”

Dean’s a thousand percent sure he doesn’t want to know, but he asks anyway. “What about me?” he says gruffly. “What’s my soul look like?”

Cas looks at him and the air shifts as Dean feels the weight of ageless, inexplicably  _human_  eyes on his face. He ducks away from Cas’ gaze and his fingers shake as he reaches for his untouched burger, but he can’t pick it up. He breathes out as Cas begins to speak again. “When I found your soul in Hell it was shredded and flayed apart almost beyond repair.”

Dean’s mouth twists in a hard smile and his fingers are stronger as he picks up his food. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he mutters, and takes a bite.

A warm hand gently curls around his arm, and Dean swallows as he looks his friend in the eye. “You didn’t let me finish,” Castiel chides, and his eyes are deep and yearning, so Dean leans in closer as his heart skips with unbidden hope.

For a moment Cas searches Dean’s face with a frown between his eyebrows as if he’s looking for something that isn’t there anymore, then turns his eyes to his plate before speaking. “For millennia I stood vigilant in Heaven over Earth.  I’ve watched humanity from its very inception. I’ve seen races die and be born, empires rise and fall and humanity learn to love more fiercely than any creature I’ve ever seen. But never once have I seen anything as remarkable as you, Dean. Even in the depths of Hell your soul was unlike any other I’d encountered.”

The air gets caught in Dean’s throat as he tries to exhale, and he sits frozen in his seat. Castiel is looking at him the way Dean’s caught him doing in quiet, secret moments, from the corner of his eye. The only word Dean can think of to describe it is _wonder_.

Tears – frustrated, desperate, passionate tears – form in the corners of Cas’ eyes, and his voice quivers with emotion and absolute conviction as he continues. “I have never once seen a soul shine as brightly as yours, Dean Winchester. Your soul is brighter than a thousand suns and all the stars in this galaxy shining at their apex. I’ve seen  _everything_  this universe has to offer, and  _nothing_  compares to your beauty. I look at you and I see humanity in its purest form – beneath layers of agony and pain, there is such raw good in you. Love shines out of your every pore. Do you have any idea what that’s like to look at?”

Dean is dumbstruck and amazed, and Cas’ hand remains a scorching weight on his skin that he can’t move out from. He can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t believe  _he_  could be so beautiful to someone like Castiel, who’s seen fucking  _oceans flood_  and fish learn to walk, and who is looking at him like he always does with such  _reverence_  that Dean feels like he’s being split apart and sewn back together under Castiel’s worshipful hands and cradled in a blanket of awe and adoration.

He wants to yell and cry that Cas has it all wrong, that he’s ugly and broken, and he’s done things he will never atone for,  _unforgivable_  sins. It’s Sam who’s always mattered, Sam not Dean. To his dad, to the apocalypse, to the whole fucking world. 

Not Dean.

“Cas,  _Castiel,_  I…” he chokes around the dryness in his throat and the pinpricks behind his eyes. He can’t, won’t,  _can’t_  believe it himself, but by the same token he won’t doubt Cas. Not about this. “You see all that?” he settles for asking.

Cas’ lips are chapped and human as his mouth twists and he looks at his lap. His eyelashes cast a dark stain on his cheekbones that Dean longs to sweep his thumb across, but his hands are shaking too badly. “I did,” Cas answers quietly, and Dean gets it now. Cas has lost more than Dean can ever understand, on a scope he can’t comprehend, and there’s no way of making it better. There’s nothing he can do. He doesn’t know what it’s like to see souls or feel the earth rotate under his feet, doesn’t know if his soul really is as bright as Cas says, but if there’s one thing he does know, it’s loss.

So he pushes his plate aside and stands up. He wraps his arms around Cas’ shoulders, fingers digging into the plaid shirt he gave Cas until they can buy him his own clothes, and holds on.

Castiel is a statue beneath his touch, but muscle by muscle he melts into Dean, reaches up to clutch at his henley and tuck his head into the crook of his neck. The shaking begins slowly, almost imperceptibly, but it’s not long before Cas is gasping for air and desperately pulling Dean closer to him, staining the shoulder of his shirt with tears. “It’s okay, I’m still here,” Dean whispers into freshly shampooed hair, kisses the top of his head and his temple and his forehead and repeats over and over  _“I’m still here.”_

He holds on until the tremors subside, and then some.


End file.
